Podcast Show #37

Corey Pein recounts the creation of the recently launched groundbreaking site warisbusiness.com, a nonpartisan site covering military contracting, the global arms trade and the lobby, and how he began the project with two assumptions: The first- a lot of people are making money from war, while enjoying the comforts of anonymity (such people were once plainly called profiteers), and the second: Privatizing war inevitably prolongs it, creating what economists call a “perverse incentive.” Mr. Pein discusses the bought out generals and the militarization of the economy, and the latest on the ‘Rent-A-Generals’ exposé. He talks about scandals such as Mina Corp and the subsequent cover up, US Embassies as marketing arms of military corporations, the win-win outcome of elections for the Pentagon contractors and arms makers, Wikileaks, and more!

Corey Pein is an award-winning investigative reporter and long-form narrative journalist who writes about the military industrial complex, money, politics and violence from London, UK. Previously, he has lived in New Mexico, Oregon, Georgia and in Southeast Asia. His latest project is warisbusiness.com, a startup news site covering military contracting and the global arms trade. Mr. Pein has worked on staff at Columbia Journalism Review, Willamette Week, the Santa Fe Reporter and IHT ThaiDay, and contributed to Salon, Slate, The American Prospect, and CounterPunch, among others.

Excellent interview from the next generation. Some college kids recently asked me to document white phosphorus manufacture in the sleepy town of Perry, Florida. This is risky, but hey it is time to speak out. Martin Electronics, the largest manufacturer of hand grenades in the U.S. is owned by Chemring Ltd. in the UK. My cousin designs missile defense systems for BAE in New Hampshire. Since BAE owns the HAARP patents, I was concerned about U.S. security being breached. ‘Apparently’ in the world of big war business, these security issues can be compartmentalized. Who is guarding the henhouse? Thanks Sibel and Corey.

By the way, Rop Gonggrijp’s was in the subpoena, or NSL or whatever it was, that the DOJ served on Twitter recently and he also helped prepare the Collateral Murder video.

The second video is at 25C3 on Dec 30, 2008 speech by Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt (real name Daniel Domscheit-Berg) where they explain somewhat how Wikileaks works.
(59 min)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK3TzGRe-ls

The third video is at 26C3 on Dec 12, 2009 titled “WikiLeaks Release 1.0” with speakers Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt (real name Daniel Domscheit-Berg) where they talk about what they have been doing.
(1 hour 3 min)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK3TzGRe-ls

The fifth video is at 27C3 on Dec 12, 2010 by Daniel Domscheit-Berg and during the Q&A he explains he left Wikileaks cause he doesn’t think it is transparent enough anymore.
(1 hour)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=305A1MBdsnk

The final video is at 27C3 on by Daniel Domscheit-Berg where he talks about the new whistleblower project OpenLeaks and the ideas behind it.
(1 hour)

Hi Sibel. My “comment is awaiting moderation” as it says when I hit the “submit comment” button. I think it’s does that when there’s more than one link (I have 7 links) in a comment to prevent spam so I guess you have to approve it.

The real reason they can get away with that is they have an unlimited supply of money, i.e. the Federal Reserve and corporate-government partnerships like Lockheed, Rand, etc . Without the Fed there would be no empire or these perverse wars.

I thought of him because I just saw this story about another banking whistleblower from Switzerland, Rudolf Elmer. He’s turning his evidence over to wikileaks in London on Monday before going back to Switzerland to face trial there:

You are on to something with the banking. If you get the chance check out a book called “The Infiltrator” by Robert Mazur, it’s by the guy who penetrated BCCI in Operation C-Chase. He was undercover for two or three years, it is a great read.

I really want to see “Inside Job”, Ferguson did “No End in Sight” about Iraq and it was very powerful. Did you see it in theater or is it out on DVD?

“Major Israeli banks, credit institutions, and communication companies are among the advertisers in an extreme right wing weekly magazine that called for building concentration camps.” Those are for palestinians mind you, so it’s OK. Fortunately no anti-semitism going on (never mind that they’re Semites).